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Hackney Central Info
'Heart of Hackney'
'The town of Hackney is of great extent, containing no less than 12 hamlets or separate villages (which) make up but one parish viz. of Hackney. The town is so remarkable for the retreat of wealthy citizens, that there is at this time near a hundred coaches kept in it; tho’ I will not join with a certain satirical author, who said of Hackney, that there are more carriages than Christians in it.'
So said Daniel Defoe in his book, ‘The Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain’ in 1724. This is an allusion to the poet and critic Alexander Pope who was loath to acknowledge that non-conformists, who formed a prominent section of the Hackney community, were really Christian!
Defoe must have known Hackney well for around 1699 he lived in the parish and two of his children Sophia and Martha were baptized in the church. He later built a house for his family in Stoke Newington where he lived between 1716 and a year before his death in 1731. While at Stoke Newington he wrote Robinson Crusoe.
As far as carriages are concerned it was thought in the 18th century that the London cabs known as Hackney Carriages were named after the village which had been the first to have a regular stand of vehicles for hire. However the true derivation is from an old French word for a horse for hire, a hackeney.
The village of Hackney now gives its name to the whole London Borough which includes Stoke Newington and Shoreditch but originally it referred solely to a 5th or 6th century Saxon settlement known as Haca’s eoth meaning well-watered land belonging to Haca, in effect an ‘island’ in the marshes to the east of London. This was probably situated in the area around the later church of St. Augustine (only the tower now remains), in the angle made by the River Lea and Hackney Brook.
Originally within of the Manor of Stebbenhuth (Stepney) the Hackney holding was part of extensive lands belonging to the Bishops of London, At the time of the reformation it was granted to Lord Wentworth and the Hackney section of the Manor, known as Lordshold, began to hold its own courts to decide, for example, matters of dispute over property. An area of around fifty acres in the immediate vicinity of the church was vested in the Rector of Hackney and known as Grumbold’s Manor.
Amongst the villages named by Defoe is ‘Church Street’ this originally was the northern part of what is called Mare Street today embracing Grumbold’s Manor and stretched from Darnley Road to Lower Clapton Road. That and part of the hamlets of ‘Hummerton’ and ‘Clopton’ comprise what is now called ‘The Heart of Hackney’.
‘The Heart of Hackney’ is still the administrative centre of the borough as the Town Hall stands in Mare Street a little to the south of Hackney Central Station - the starting point for this walk. Many of Hackney’s most historic buildings come within this area.
1
Gibbon’s Furniture Store
Described as one of Hackney’s longest serving businesses Gibbon’s Store occupying a long stretch of shops, with art deco frontages, in Amhurst Road was established in the 1890’s by Elizabeth Gibbon.
It operated until May 2002 as a cash only establishment but after the retirement of descendants of Elizabeth the building burnt down in 2003 and is now a vacant site awaiting redevelopment. a few of the original units survive at the eastern end that give a flavour of the original decelopment.
2 Brett Manor
A post war housing development small in extent but enormous in significance as a pioneering example of modern constructional methods. Brett Manor was built to provide low cost accommodation for former members of the Eton Manor Boy’s Club in 1948. The architect was Edward Mills in association with engineers Ove Arup & Partners (now a very prominent civil engineering company - see Shoreditch Walk). This was the first reinforced concrete box frame building to be completed in London and its style influenced much that was to follow in Hackney and beyond. (Source: Robinson i ). Nikolaus Pevsner described it with some affection in 1952 as ‘a small block of excellent flats - a promising modern contribution’ ii
3 The Narroway (north end of Mare Street)
This is the historic high street of the ancient village of Hackney and still retains its original width hence its locally adopted name. It is now mostly shops with upper parts Victorian in character, however these facades often conceal a core or foundation that is much older. In Tudor times there were cottages and a couple of inns in this stretch, then known as Church Street. The site of Brett, Gould and Kenmure Roads in the 18th and early 19th century was the location of a famous pleasure garden, the New Mermaid, a place of popular resort for townsfolk of London. A notable and well-documented balloon trip took place from here in 1811 when a Mr. James Sadler ascended to much applause and drunken celebration (Source: Watson iii). Gould Terrace (named after former Governor of the Bank of England, Nathaniel Gould, with its fine display of street foliage reflects the glorious garden here in times past.
Just around the corner to the south of Kenmure Road stands a substantial mansion now divided on the ground floor into three shops (including Shoefayre). A plaque here describes it as Hackney’s Manor House. Built in the mid 19th century it was the home of J.R.D.Tyssen, a steward to the Manor of Hackney, whose antiquarian collection now forms the core of the Hackney Archives - a marvellous resource for local historians.
A little further south is a brown plaque to the famous early writer on women’s rights Mary Wollstonecroft who lived here, incognito, in 1784 with her friend Eliza Bishop, who was running away from the man she considered a cruel husband. Mary went on to open a girls school on Newington Green and wrote in 1792, the seminal text ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’. She died giving birth to a daughter Mary Godwin (later Shelley) the author of ’Frankenstein’. (Tomalin iv ) There is a holographic representation of Mary Wollstonecroft in the new Hackney Museum (see later). Opposite this plaque is a haberdasher’s shop called Mermaid Fabrics. The name commemorates the Old Mermaid Inn where in the 17th century Samuel Pepys was an occasional visitor. Here he played shuffleboard and ate neat’s (ox) tongue with much pleasure during the landlordship of one John Pepyatt.
4 The Old Town Hall 
This building dates from 1802 but was re-fronted in the present baroque style in 1900. This building served as a town hall until a larger one was built on the present Town Hall Square in the mid 19th century. On this site from Tudor times stood an irregular brick building known as Church House built by the Rector Christopher Urswick in 1520. It provided rooms for the parish vestry to meet and housed a charity school and a lock-up for miscreants.
5 St. Augustines Tower
This tower is all that remains, above ground, of the medieval parish church of Hackney dating from the 13th century or earlier and founded by the Knights Templar a Christian military order. Pepys, after visiting the old Mermaid Inn, came to this church in 1667 where he admired the new organ but confessed characteristically in his private diary ‘that which we went chiefly to see was the young ladies of the schools, whereof there is great store, very pretty’.
The main body of the church was taken down and sold as building material in 1797, by which time a new church for Hackney parishioners had been built nearby. The old tower alone was retained to house the peal of bells. A working, early 17th century clock still remains on the third storey maintained by Hackney Historic Buildings Trust which hopes to fully restore the tower soon for public access. The Hackney Historic Buildings Trust have undertaken many repairs during their tenure of the building, which as part of a recent Heritage Lottery Fund grant will enable the building to enable wider access to its assets.
6 St. John-at-Hackney Church
Built in 1791-1797 to replace the old church no longer large enough for the burgeoning Hackney congregation. The architect was James Spiller a friend of Sir John Soane, the designer of the Bank of England. The tower and porches were added in 1812 and soon after the bells were moved here from the old church tower. To Victorian eyes the plainness of the church was not appreciated. Poet George MacDonald was perhaps not alone when he described St. John’s as ‘the ugliest church in Christendom bar one’ the ‘one’ is not disclosed! However, more recent architectural historians like Andrew Saint admire it greatly. He wrote, ‘It would be fine in itself, but what makes it magnificent is the tower above, unexpectedly in stone, topped by freely curving volutes’, which others have described as looking like the ears of sad bloodhounds. The organ here provided all the church music for the popular film, ‘Four weddings and a Funeral’. In the church can be found many of the fine Tudor and Jacobean memorials, including that of Christopher Urswick, moved from the old church in 1797. The gardens will shortly be the subject of a major Heritage Lottery Fund grant which will enable their conservation for future generations.
7 The Tomb of Conrad Loddiges 
Of German origin, Loddiges was a nurseryman in Hackney in the 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the first gardener in Europe to grow wisteria and also introduced the rhododendron at his nursery in Mare Street, Hackney v. The heated conservatory built by his son George in 1821 was known as the largest hothouse in the world, a veritable ‘Eden Project’ of its day and indeed it was the inspiration for Joseph Paxton’s great Crystal Palace in 1851.
Among other burials in the churchyard was , in the 17th century ,’ Anthony, a poore old negro’, said to be over a hundred years old and possibly Hackney's first Afro-Caribbean resident. Sir Francis Beaufort is also commemorated being responsible for the invention of the Beafort wind scale.
A square of late Georgian houses laid out in 1816 around central gardens containing a finely restored drinking fountain donated to Hackney residents by Howard Morley Esq.in 1894. The east side of the square was destroyed by bombing in the second world war but is to be rebuilt soon (Summer 2002) in Georgian style by Furlong Homes. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Illyich Lenin used to visit, around 1905, his friend and comrade Theodore Rothstein at a house on the west side. 19th century Jewish writer Grace Aguilar also lived in the Square. To the north-east of the square is Holly Villas in Clapton Passage which is a fine terrace of bay-windowed Victorian villas of 1882.
‘On the whole I spent my life more happily at Hackney than I had ever done before’ wrote Joseph Priestley one of England’s greatest scientists who lived at a house in the 1790s (demolished in 1880) on the corner of the Passage and Lower Clapton Road. Priestley discovered oxygen and was the first to pump carbon dioxide into water creating artificial sparkling mineral water, a process that eventually resulted in the multi-billion dollar business Coca Cola! He was hounded out of his house and laboratory in Birmingham by a mob that opposed his support for the French Revolution. He was invited to come to Hackney to take up the post of Unitarian Minister at the Old Gravel Pit Chapel where he had many friends amongst the Hackney Dissenters. A plaque marks the site of his house above the existing corner building in Lower Clapton Road. He emigrated to America in 1794 fearing a repeat of his family’s persecution.
In a cottage behind Priestley’s house, in the closing years of the 18th century, lived a Huguenot widow called Louisa Perina Courtauld, a designer of gold plate. Her son, Samuel, founded the Courtauld dynasty of silk and artificial fibre manufacturers and a descendant founded the Courtauld Institute now in Somerset House.
9 Mothers’ Square 
The Salvation Army created on this site a hospital for unmarried mothers in 1884 using the substantial semi-detached villas known as Maitland Place (c. 1824) as nurses’ quarters and offices. Maitland Place survives but the buildings at the rear were demolished in 1992 to make way for Mothers’ Square, a housing development by Architects Hunt Thompson in a classical style that is described by Cherry as a ‘deliberate imitation of Victorian Hackney’ vii . A central pergola reduces the affect of on street parking. The scheme won a Civic Trust Award.
Off route
Clapton Pond built as a reservoir for the Hackney Water Company in the 17th century and behind the Bishop Wood’s Almshouses also dating from the 17th century with a tiny Victorian Gothic chapel. On the site of Hackney Community College by Lea Bridge roundabout stood Brooke House a medieval house later owned by Henry VIII where he had a historic meeting with his daughter (later Queen) Mary. Also in this house in the late 16th century lived Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford who some scholars believe wrote plays attributed to Shakespeare.
Another playwright whose authorship, however, is not in dispute is Harold Pinter who lived at 19 Thistlewaite Road and was a pupil at Hackney Downs School nearby. In a poem, remembering his old schoolmaster Joseph Brierley, Pinter wrote in 1977:
Dear Joe, I’d like to walk with you
From Clapton Pond to Stamford Hill
And on,
Through Manor House to Finsbury Park
And back,
On the dead 653 trolleybus,
To Clapton Pond,
And walk across the shadows on to Hackney Downs viii
10 The London Orphan’s Asylum
Looking at present like a romantic Greek folly, all that is left of the original substantial classical building is the chapel and two colonnades which originally led to boys’ and girls’ dormitories. Built by W.S.Inman in 1826 as an orphanage, it was vacated after cholera epidemics in east London in the 1860s and taken over by the newly founded Salvation Army in 1871 as its Congress Hall. It returned briefly to its role as providing asylum to children when in 1937, 400 Basque refugee children from the Spanish Civil War were accommodated here. Brigadier J. Martin reported that the children were “ …completely undisciplined. The boys go climbing over the roofs like little monkeys. For the most part they have no sense of religion or use for the church. They seem to have Communist sentiments.” (Mander vi) The Hall was mostly demolished in the 1980s to extend Clapton Girls School. In 2001, Turner prizewinner Martin Creed installed a neon sign on the portico with the slogan ‘EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT’. With that optimistic note in mind it is currently being converted into a new information technology centre for Hackney residents as the result of a large Heritage Lottery fund grant. There will be a permanent exhibition inside which gives the history of the building when it opens in 2005.
The orphanage was built on the site of the once famous Hackney School. At the end of the 18th century it was said 60 or so members of the House of Commons were old boys of the school. This building, almost more than any other, symbolises the changes to the social composition of the local community over 200 years.
11 The Round Chapel 
Built by Henry Fuller in 1869-71 as a Congregational Church. It is considered to be one of the finest non-conformist buildings in London, Pevsner described its semi-circular façade as like an opera house. It is notable for a fine iron columned interior which contemporary critics described as more suitable for a railway station! It has now been beautifully restored and decorated in the original polychromatic style by Hackney Historic Buildings Trust as a centre for the performing arts. Have a look inside for a real treat, if you find it open.
12 The Strand Building 
Urswick Road and Lower Clapton Road. Formerly Hackney Electricity Company showrooms and offices built in 1924 when it was described as being ‘suggestive of the architecture of Ancient Rome’. It was converted into flats in 1995, emphasising its art-deco style and promoted by the developers as being built around a secret landscaped roof courtyard with a water fountain and rose pagoda.
13 Sutton Square 
A speculative housing development of the early 1980’s by architects Campbell, Zogolovitch, Wilkinson and Gough (CZWG, builders of the spectacular ‘Cascades’ building on the Isle of Dogs). It is described as ‘pop classical’ in style by Bridget Cherry or as ‘a downright, upright, new fangled, old-fashioned London square’ in the Architect’s Journal of May 1983.
It was built on the site of a Metal Box factory and represents a development in Hackney over recent decades whereby industry has progressively given way to gentrification, reversing the process of the mid 19th century when the grounds of the grand country houses of the wealthy provided space for factory development.
14 Sutton Place 
The prevalence of ‘Sutton’ place names, in this area, originates with Thomas Sutton the man who in 1611 founded the famous Charterhouse School and Hospital in Clerkenwell. He was said to be the richest commoner in the land and lived at a house, demolished in 1809, to make way for this fine flat-fronted and well-preserved Georgian terrace of 16 houses.
15 Sutton House 
Hackney’s oldest surviving house was built in 1535 for Sir Ralph Sadleir, Henry VIII’s ambassador to Scotland and later principal Secretary of State (today he would be called Prime Minister) It was known originally as ‘the bryk place’ presumably because it was a unique brick building in an otherwise half-timbered village. In the seventeenth century it became a girls school with pupils, as we have seen, much appreciated, by Pepys, when they attended church on Sunday. It was modified in the mid 18th century when it was converted into two houses and in 1904 when it had become St. John’s Church Institute. Wenlock Barn was added at the rear by Lionel Crane, son of Arts and Crafts designer Walter Crane. It was restored by the National Trust in the 1990’s by Hackney architects Julian Harrap and Richard Griffiths The house has been restored in such a way that the numerous layers of its earlier history can be revealed by opening hinged panels or lifting floorboards.
There are some very fine panelled rooms including one of oak linen-fold. Other original features like several stone fireplaces remain from the original build and a later wall painting on the west staircase, dates from around 1620 consisting of trompe l’oeil strap-work and heraldic animals.
16 Burberry Factory 
One of Hackney’s favourite tourist attractions, thanks to the factory shop selling the world famous Burberry range of garments. It is the last of Hackney’s many large rag-trade factories still functioning. The premises were formerly occupied by another clothing company, Polikoff. Both companies were taken over by Great Universal Stores who retain the name Burberry for obvious commercial reasons.
17 Old Gravel Pit Chapel 
Dating from 1716 this building is currently a factory but retains some of its original brickwork from the time that it was a Presbyterian chapel. By 1971 the congregation had become Unitarian in outlook and invited Pristley to become Minister here; an act of some bravery because his previous meeting house in Birmingham had been burnt to the ground by a ‘church and king’ mob whipped up by agent provocateurs. A GLC blue plaque to Priestley on the building facing Morning Lane is now obscured by a new housing development. The building was vacated by the Unitarians in 1809 when they built a grander chapel nearby. A Congregational group then took it over before themselves building the Round Chapel in Lower Clapton Road in 1871.
18 The Paragon 
An elegant terrace of linked semi-detached houses built in 1813 by Robert Collins, the builder responsible for Sutton Place. It has some fine features including Greek key-pattern motifs on the stuccoed fronts and curious glass fan-lights above the doors. The houses were restored in the 1980’s by a housing association though unfortunately the iron railings, which originally set off the group, have not been replaced after being taken down for the war effort in the 1940s. One of the former residents here was the charismatic Rev. De Kewer Williams who was a descendant of Oliver Cromwell and built up in his house an extensive collection of memorabilia associated with his hero. This is now in the collection of the Museum of London. It has to be said that part of his admiration for Cromwell relates to the latter’s persecution of the Irish Catholics.
19 Barber’s Barn 
On the corner of Darnley Road and Mare Street stood in former times an ancient house called, for no known reason, Barber’s barn. During the time of the Commonwealth it was the residence of Colonel John Okey, an officer in Cromwell’s Model Army and signatory to Charles I’s death warrant. This proved to be an unfortunate autograph as it resulted in his own execution for regicide after the Restoration!
20 St Thomas’s Square 
A generally well-maintained garden with a grade II granite water fountain dated 1912. Nothing is left of the fine buildings of the 1790s except the street plaque dated 1772, re-sited on the wall of Cordwainer’s Court. The latter now a hall of residence was built on the site of a Presbyterian Chapel, part of the south wall of that can be seen preserved in the adjacent burial ground.
A notable inhabitant of the square in the 1780’s was Richard Price a mathematician and financial adviser to the British Government. His work on life expectation is said to have been the origin of life assurance and retirement pension schemes. However he came into disrepute with the government when he announced his strong support for the French Revolution. He proclaimed, with some passion, from the pulpit of the Old Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney ‘Be encouraged all ye friends of freedom - Behold kingdoms-starting from sleep, breaking their fetters, and claiming justice from their oppressors! Behold the light you have struck out, after setting AMERICA free, reflected to FRANCE, and there kindled into flame that lays despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates EUROPE!’ On his death in 1791, Price was succeeded by Joseph Priestley as Minister of the chapel. Mary Wollstonecroft was a great admirer of his.
Benjamin D’Israeli as a boy attended a school in this square (according to Benjamin Clarke ‘Glimpses of Ancient Hackney’ 1895) it was his conversion to Christianity in Hackney Church that was the prerequisite to his later becoming Prime Minister!
21 St. Thomas’s Burial Ground 
Among the memorials in this burial ground attached to the chapel is one (near the arch on Mare Street) for the Braidwood family. Thomas Braidwood was the first to run a school specifically for the deaf. The school, known as Braidwood’s Academy, was in Chatham Place, Hackney and among his pupils was the son of the prominent statesman Charles James Fox. Tallyrand, the French revolutionary, at a radical dinner party in Hackney in the 1791, was much impressed by the sight of one of Europe’s greatest orators communicating with his son using only sign language.
22 Lansdowne Club (No. 195 Mare Street) 
Probably the best of the few remaining houses from early 18th century Hackney, in brown brick with rubbed red brick window headers. It now is in need of some tender loving care that hopefully will be forthcoming through Hackney Historic Buildings Trust. In 1860 the house became a refuge for discharged women prisoners named after the Quaker, Elizabeth Fry, the prison reformer.
23 The London College of Fashion 
Formerly the Cordwainers College its speciality is training students for the leather trades. The building dates from 1877 when it was built as Lady Eleanor Holles’ Girls School that moved to Hampton, Surrey in the 1930s.
24 London Fields 
Survives from medieval times when it was lammas land along the track from Hackney to London. That meant that commoners could put their animals on otherwise privately owned arable land between August and April. A group of sculptured figures by Freeform Arts Trust commemorates the market porter’s route used by farmers in Hackney to take their produce to Cheapside market in the City. On the east side was a building known as Tower House which gave its name to Tower Street (now known as Martello Street, a misnomer if ever there was one!). In Tower House lived in the 1650s Kathleen Woodcock, daughter of Capt. Woodcock, a soldier in Cromwell’s army. The poet John Milton courted her as his second wife although he was already blind by that time. She died in childbirth soon after their marriage and Milton, Cromwell’s secretary, dedicated a window to Kathleen in St. Margaret’s Westminster and wrote an elegiac poem praising her virtues.
25 ‘The Hothouse’ 
(named after Conrad Loddiges’ renowned Hackney conservatory)
At the north end of Martello Street new premises have been constructed for Freeform Arts Trust providing studios for artists and craftspeople, conference space and a cafe. Designed by Ash Sakula Architects it is an exciting new contribution to London’s latest ‘cultural quarter’. It has been said that there are more artists living and working in Hackney than in any comparable district in Europe.
26 Town Hall Square 
Currently undergoing a considerable transformation this square presents in effect an outdoor museum for 20th century architecture. Starting with the Edwardian Baroque and grandiose Hackney Empire of 1901 and ending with the modernist clear-cut lines of the new Learning and Technology Centre of 2002. The present Town Hall built in 1934-37 by Lanchester & Lodge in Portland stone with finely preserved art-deco interiors stands behind an open space created when the earlier Gothic Town,( or rather Vestry), Hall of the 1860s was demolished.
Built by Frank Matcham, the foremost theatre architect of his day, it probably is the best surviving suburban music hall of many built in the period. With the decline of live theatre, in the television era of the sixties, it became a Mecca bingo hall but through a vigorous campaign led by Mr. Roland Muldoon it has re-opened as a variety theatre and has been restorated to its original condition with complete rebuilding of associated structures. The current work has been funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the Arts and a fundraising campaign spearheaded by comedian Rhys Gryff- Jones.
John Betjeman, formerly Poet Laureate, who was a founder member of the Hackney Society in 1967 (now incorporating Hackney Historic Buildings Trust) wrote in his poem ‘The Cockney Amorist’:
No more the Hackney Empire
Shall find us in its stalls
When on the limelit crooner
The thankful curtain falls,
And soft electric lamplight
Reveals the gilded walls ix
Thanks to national lottery punters in Hackney and far beyond we shall once again be able to enjoy the gorgeous interior of the Empire with its brightly ‘gilded walls’.
28 Ocean Music Venue
A complete internal refurbishment (2001) of two buildings from the early 20th century, the Central Library of 1908 by H. A. Crouch for Andrew Carnegie (free libraries were opposed by De Kewer Williams of the Paragon!) and the Methodist Central Hall of 1927 by Gunton and Gunton. Once again funded by Arts Lottery money famous international stars like James Brown and Dionne Warwick have appeared here during 2002. Within Ocean there are three state of the art auditoria accommodating audiences up to 2,100 and also a music training centre for local young people. The venue is currently closed and looking for a new managing agent further to going into receivership in 2004.
29 The Learning and Technology Centre 
Built by Hodder Associates (2002) in a boldly modernist style clad in grey metal and glass it houses the new Hackney Central Library and the Hackney Museum. Stephen Hodder writes, ‘Our work seeks to extend and transform the language of modernism and attain a sense of permanence’ ( Hodder Associates are also responsible for the Clissold Leisure Centre . See Stoke Newington walk)
In the museum can be found among many other relics of Hackney’s rich and long past a flint hand axe from the old stone age c.200.000 BC, a Saxon dug-out boat dating from the 6th century A.D., an oil portrait of 18th century nurseryman Conrad Loddiges, a holographic recreation of Mary Wollstonecroft and a marble bust of Daniel Defoe.
i Elizabeth Robinson Twentieth Century Buildings of Hackney (Hackney Society 1999)
ii Nikolaus Pvsner London Vol II The Buildings of England (Penguin Books 1952)
iii Isobel Watson Hackney and Stoke Newington Past (Historical Publications 1990)
iv Claire Tomalin The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (Pelican Books 1977)
v David Solman Loddiges of Hackney (Hackney Society (1995)
vi Bridget Cherry London 4 North The Buildings of England (Penguin Books 1999)
vii David Mander Late Extra! Hackney in the News (Sutton Publishing 2000)
viii Harold Pinter Various Voices – Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-1968 (Faber and Faber 1998)
ix John Betjeman The Illustrated Poems of John Betjeman (John Murray 1995)